When I graduate college, I don’t know if I’ll have a job. I’m nearing the halfway point of my degree, and I don’t know what my life will look like in two years: what my income will be, where I will live and work, how my day-to-day will look. Will I be in graduate school―and for what degree? Will I be in a corporate nine to five, or will I be paying the bills with piecemeal part-time work? Will I be in New York or California or somewhere else entirely? Will I be able to make ends meet?
I’m studying classics―ancient Greek and Latin. Having read Plato and Homer in Greek makes for a decent fun fact, but hardly provides much in the way of practical, marketable hard skills. There’s no set career path for classics majors. And it’s much the same for anyone studying the humanities―English, history, philosophy, religion. Finding a job is a perennial source of uncertainty. So why pay for a college degree in a field that doesn’t guarantee career success or a comfortable life? Why invest time and energy in what is, economically speaking, impractical? In other words, is studying the humanities useless?
It might seem so. Humanities degrees have been steadily declining over the last decade. While the humanities made up 15 percent of all bachelor’s degrees conferred in 2005, that number dropped to 8.8 percent by 2022. Such a decline seems to coincide with a rising interest in STEM fields, which often have clearer career prospects and more direct applications to an increasingly technological twenty-first century.
But as a student in classics―and more importantly, as a Christian―I’m convinced that the humanities are useful and worthy of study. In fact, I’m so convinced that the humanities are worth pursuing that I’m willing to run the risk of forgoing the stability and certainty of a more “practical” field. And whether or not you’re a student majoring in the humanities, you should also care about the humanities.
A Wider Gaze
The humanities are uniquely directed toward the past. While fields such as political science and economics draw on historical trends and patterns, their primary focus is an analysis of the present moment. STEM subjects such as computer science and biology are almost exclusively built on meeting present needs. But we also need to know the past.
C.S. Lewis, in his sermon “Learning in Wartime,” presses the importance of “intimate knowledge of the past” as a guardrail against the blindspots of the present: “A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.” Lewis is not claiming that people in the past were less prone to error than we are, but simply that the errors and assumptions of previous ages are different from ours.
One of the best defenses, then, against getting swept up in the shifting attitudes and trends of the passing moment is to study the past―to develop an expansive perspective, to recognize that the current concerns of the world are not ultimate. Christians are witnesses sent “into the world” yet “not of the world” (John 17:15-16). Historical knowledge is certainly not sufficient in itself to keep us from conforming to the world and its demands―only the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit can ultimately preserve us. Yet at least one of the ways to resist the pull of popular culture is to develop an awareness of ages, cultures, and peoples far removed from ours. Such an awareness reminds us that what feels pressing and all-consuming in the present is often only the shifting sands of culture. And in light of this constant flux, the steadfastness of our God and his promises become all the more precious and real: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8).
While studying Homer, for instance, my class discussed the widespread collapse of Mediterranean civilizations in the twelfth century BC―cities abandoned, economic systems dismantled, populations gutted, entire writing systems forgotten―a time when, in the words of my professor, “the world once ended.” Of course, it didn’t truly end. Greek society survived and flourished again. But as I learned about this ancient world catastrophe, I saw that the institutions and powers of our world, no matter how secure they seem, are never eternal.
Furthermore, a cognizance of the past enriches our understanding of people and their perspectives. It guards us against reading the Bible―which was written thousands of years ago and addressed to very different audiences in very different places―with a blindness to context. Rather, knowing that we are influenced by the assumptions of our own time and place, we can approach Scripture with humility and careful diligence. We are able to account for the distance between us and the original intended audience. According to the late teacher and counselor David Powlison, reading old literature helps us to “understand the ways that people differ from each other, and the ways we are all alike―an exceedingly valuable component of wisdom.”
To be clear, studying the humanities cannot automatically make unbelievers Christian nor make Christians more faithful. It is not an inherently Christian activity. Yet insofar as the humanities widen the lens with which we view the world, they can be a helpful tool of teaching used by the Lord, lest we be like the forgetful generation of Israelites after Joshua, “who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel” (Judg. 2:10).
A Wonder for God
Studying the humanities also trains us to know the Lord. Study, after all, is an inescapable part of Christian joy: “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight in them” (Ps. 111:2). Delighting in the Lord is intertwined with an intentional pursuit of knowledge―knowledge of his character and his deeds. True, knowing God and knowing about God are not the same thing. Factual knowledge about God is neither equivalent to nor as ultimate as personal knowledge of God. Yet knowing about God typically precedes a true and intimate knowledge of God.
Conversely, failing to pursue a knowledge of God is fatal. The Lord brings such a charge against Israel: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me” (Hos. 4:6). A thirst for knowledge is required of all God’s people.
And so, in his Foundations for Lifelong Learning, John Piper writes, “the great purpose of lifelong learning―education in serious joy―is to magnify Christ by enjoying him above all things and in all things.” How does learning grow our knowledge of God? Piper continues,
the Bible both commands and assumes that we will know the world, and not just the word. We will study the general book of God called nature and history and culture. And we will study the special book of God called the Bible. And the reason is that God has revealed his glory in both―and means for us to see him in both, and savor him in both, and show him to the world through both.
All learning, when honoring to God, aims at delight in God by cultivating a knowledge of and a wonder for his glory as revealed in Scripture and creation.
This aim is not exclusive to the humanities; STEM fields can also pursue a knowledge of the natural world to the glory of God. Both are compatible with a faithful pursuit of knowing God. Yet orienting our studies around this ultimate end―knowing and delighting in God―calls into question many of the reasons why students choose not to study the humanities. We ought to choose the majors and degrees that will best equip us―not for the highest paying jobs or the most predictable career paths―but for joy in the Lord.
Studying the humanities, similar to what Lewis says about the intellectual life, “is not the only road to God, nor the safest, but we find it to be a road, and it may be the appointed road for us.” So not everyone is called to study the humanities, but some of us are. Not everyone is interested in learning about literature and history and culture, but some of us are. And for those of us who have been given, in the Lord’s wise providence, a desire to study these things, perhaps we will best serve God by cultivating and refining our particular delights to behold his glory.
So my desire is for us to be shaped by an expansive view of God in every course of study and every station of life: for students to not fear the uncertain future, for parents to encourage in us a consuming passion to know our God, for every Christian to believe in his inescapable glory. For there is no other joy so deep or calling so high as to “count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:8). Indeed, in every pursuit―including the God-given study of the humanities―we may say, with humble confidence, “Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth” (Hos. 6:3).
This is the final series from the 2023-2024 Young Writers Cohort, with the authors writing about a topic they feel strongly about.
Photo Credit: Giammarco Boscaro